ca and of the
Russian plains are now as important to a farmer of Dakota as his own,
since all must find a common market in the manufacturing countries of
Europe. Speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade is likely to be as
interesting to a farmer in Nebraska as to members of the Board. He is even
tempted to try his hand at speculation, either directly through a
commission house or indirectly through the marketing of his grain. In
either case he is caught by the dangerous motion of modern commerce. The
chief remedy for these tendencies must be found in a wider acquaintance
with the facts of commercial life and a clearer perception of what is
genuine commerce.

Every farmer needs to distinguish, and distinguish carefully, the actual,
necessary machinery of trade and the principles underlying it, that he may
appreciate the genuine and oppose the false. On this account several
chapters are given to questions of exchange, with an effort to bring into
more prominent light the ways in which all commerce affects the farmer's
life.

Chapter IX. Value The Basis Of Exchange.

_The nature of value._--Perhaps no question in the discussion of wealth is
of greater importance than the nature of value. Certainly the measurement
of value in all our property is the basis of all exchanges, of all book
accounts, and of all inventories. The worth of any piece of property in
such estimates always involves some comparison, either of things possessed
or of exertion required or of satisfaction yielded. In comparing an apple
and a peach, both equally attainable, we may value the peach most highly
because it gratifies desires in higher degree. Thinking of future uses, we
may value the apple more highly because it will keep longer, and so be
available for future wants. In considering all the kinds of satisfaction
to be provided for, we may think of the peach as desired by more people
who are likely to render us service, and therefore more readily
exchangeable, and so of higher value. Again, the peach may be at the top
of the tree and the apple within reach, in which case we may think whether
the peach will give enough greater satisfaction to make it worth the
greater exertion to get it. In this way a single individual, who has wants
to be gratified only by exertion, forms an idea of value as founded upon
some relation between his wants and his powers, between the desires to be
gratified and the qualities of the object expected to give sat